Lessons From a Stairwell Shooting

The death of Akai Gurley, who was shot by a police officer patrolling a Brooklyn public housing building, shows why the Police Department needs to revise its weapons policy.

Currently, officers have almost unfettered discretion to draw their weapons even when there is no specific threat to their safety. That is unacceptable — and it can be deadly when officers are inexperienced or poorly trained. The Brooklyn case involved a jittery rookie officer who was patrolling in the Louis H. Pink Houses in East New York with his gun drawn when he fired into a darkened stairwell. The bullet struck and killed Mr. Gurley who was unarmed and had the misfortune to be using the stairs with his girlfriend.

Investigators have not yet determined why, or how, the officer fired the weapon. But common sense suggests that Mr. Gurley, a 28-year-old black man, would be alive today had the officer kept his weapon holstered.

This is not the first such case in New York City housing. In 1994, for example, 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr. was shot dead by a police officer in the Gowanus Houses, also in Brooklyn, while carrying a toy gun and playing cops and robbers with friends.

In 2004, a police officer who was patrolling in the dark with his weapon drawn at the Louis Armstrong Houses in Brooklyn, shot and killed an unarmed 19-year-old named Timothy Stansbury Jr., who was taking a rooftop short cut to a party at a neighboring building when he was shot by the officer at the top of a stairwell.

Then-Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at the time that the department would take “an in-depth look at our tactics and training, both for new and veteran officers.” But after the most recent shooting in Brooklyn, the Police Department told The Times that officers were supposed to use their discretion and that there is no “specific prohibition” against drawing a gun.

Under such a vague standard, an officer who feels fearful or uncomfortable in a housing hallway or stairwell would be justified in drawing a weapon no matter what the circumstance. But officers who draw their guns prematurely or unnecessarily risk accidental discharge, losing the weapon in a struggle or inflaming the encounter, making deadly force more likely. They also alienate the communities they are meant to protect.

The Police Department’s public housing “vertical patrol” program — under which officers sweep through the stairwells, sometimes with their weapons drawn — is already the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit, Davis v. City of New York, which was filed in 2010 in Manhattan.

When Judge Shira Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled last year that the case could go forward, she said that evidence presented so far might reasonably lead jurors to reach troubling conclusions about the program: that the city had adopted unconstitutional policies; had inadequately trained and supervised its officers; that it used more aggressive policing tactics in public housing buildings with a higher proportion of African-Americans than elsewhere.

When anyone criticizes the Police Department’s weapons policy, the department responds that public housing patrols are dangerous. But everyone walking up and down the stairs or hallways is not a criminal who deserves to have a gun aimed at them. The only way to prevent another tragedy like the killing of Mr. Gurley is for the city to create stronger, more explicit rules for how the police handle weapons in buildings that are crowded with people.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A32 of the New York edition with the headline: Lessons From a Stairwell Shooting. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe